


girl from the stars

by artsypolarbear



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Femslash, Happy Ending, Oneshot, THE LITTLE PRINCE AU, i dont know what to say it's just very soft, it's just soft all the way through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 01:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19801810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artsypolarbear/pseuds/artsypolarbear
Summary: Clarke finds herself stranded in the middle of the Sahara with her plane broken down. Thinking she's all alone with no living soul for a thousand miles around, she's surprised when the next morning she hears a girl's voice - a real voice,  coming from a real girl, in peculiar dress and with every sign telling her she's not from here.





	girl from the stars

**Author's Note:**

> don't get too excited, it's just a lil oneshot
> 
> it's from 1st person POV, Clarke's, so if you're not a fan of that, sorry
> 
> but either way...enjoy :)
> 
> (work was inspired by this piece: https://ninido.tumblr.com/post/186150737495/you-you-alone-will-have-the-stars-as-no-one)

It wasn’t until later that I realized she truly wasn’t from here.

I knew, of course, right from the start. I knew that she wasn’t like anyone I’d met, that she wasn’t in any way regular; I knew, but truly, I couldn’t have known.

It’s not every day someone like her walks into your life.

But then again, it’s also not every day that you find yourself stranded in the Sahara, your plane broken down, with only enough water for a week at most.

I’d never been the best mechanic. It was not my forte, never had been, calculations and rational thought and being precise and neat - but it was my only choice. There was something wrong with the engine. I was alone, I had no passengers, no mechanic, no one. If I did nothing, I might have as well laid down to die right then.

It is a lonely place, the Sahara. It’s even lonelier when you’re stranded in it.

But then, I’ve always felt lonely.

Out of place in a world of people with a world-view that did not match mine, that did not even have room to understand it; would have been left out, otherwise, had I not pretended to match. Spoken of dull adult things, pushed down any creative inclinations - nobody seemed to understand.

Nobody wanted to.

No imagination, no nothing. Creativity was never encouraged, and so I somehow wound up a pilot instead of an artist - how that happened, I’ll never truly know. But I thought about it the first night, a thousand miles from civilization, laid upon the warm sands below a deep blue twilight sky. A fiery red and yellow expanse of dunes, an ocean without water, truly; and there I was, shipwrecked with little chance of escape.

I stared at the sky and ruminated on that thought.

Not like I had much else to do.

It was a little ironic, I laughed to myself, that my current predicament of isolation reflected the story of my life so perfectly. I’d always acted, played along, to fit in - but never once had I come across who was on the same wavelength as me, who thought as I did, with whom I didn’t have to act and go through motions that weren’t mine.

I truly thought I never would.

That night, I dreamed of impossible things. I dreamed of a breakfast of pastries and coffee and jam and honey, laid out on my balcony back home; I dreamed of my orange trees, which would likely soon bear fruit again, sweet and bursting with the taste of summer; and of my radio crackling, a voice message miraculously reaching me across the sandy sea:

_“Clarke, do you copy? We’re coming to get you, can you give us your location-?”_

But I was alone. Even in my sleep, I knew that.

So you can imagine my surprise the next morning, when a voice spoke up from behind me, breaking the silence I'd been working in for hours.

I’d spent a good while drawing into my sketchbook, just drawing whatever came to mind - forests, houses, my family, my dog, just to pass the time. I hadn’t thought much at all, other than that I needed a break to think, to figure out what to do. Getting myself back home seemed a tall order in that moment, and I hadn’t yet dared to start trying. Sketching out ideas and things to clear my thoughts had seemed like the best first step.

“Can you draw me a sheep?”

I swear I leapt a solid six feet in the air at lightning speed, just from sheer surprise. “What?”

“Could you draw me a sheep…?”

I blinked, so certain the sight before me was a mirage - but it wasn’t. I looked, and I saw-

I saw a girl, no older than myself, with brown hair thrown over one shoulder, in peculiar dress, with an indescribable look on her face. A nice face, I noticed that immediately; it drew my eyes and I found myself unable to stop looking.

Green eyes, shining in the sun. Brows furrowed slightly, lips plump and pursed tightly together; her body language confused me, she seemed simultaneously out of sorts as well as confident and daring - almost demanding, really.

I wanted to draw her, paint her, immortalize how she looked for eternity - I’d never had such an urge as what I had then. Had it been another place, I might have asked her to sit for me, if only for a minute - but in the middle of a desert, in a place I’d only moments before thought I was fully alone, it seemed very inappropriate. I was shocked, as anyone would be - it’s not every day a beautiful strange girl seems to fall out of the sky to join you in your solitary residence in the middle of nowhere.

She wore a dress like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was more like a tunic, really, a red sash going across her chest. Shoulders bare and pale, she did not look like she had traveled through the desert on foot - hell, she didn’t even have a hat on.

It was a good while before I regained my ability to speak.

“I- what are you doing here?”

And she repeated, quieter this time: “Please, would you draw me a sheep…?”

It was such a strange request that I found myself complying. I did, after all, have my sketchbook - surely I could draw a sheep.

Only I’d never drawn a sheep. I wasn’t even so sure when I’d last seen one.

I drew one, and offered it to her - she looked at it, and then shook her head. “It looks more like a goat.”

I frowned, and tried again. The second looked more like a mangled dog, so I scrapped it myself. The third, too, looked nothing like a sheep.

“What do you need a sheep for? I could draw you something else, like a horse, or-”

“My home is quite small,” she said promptly. “A sheep would fit. A horse…I doubt it.”

I frowned again, but didn’t say anything.

For my fourth attempt, I drew a box. “The sheep is inside the box,” I said, joking, “It’s very small.”

I didn’t expect her to laugh and take the page from my hand, nodding: “Yes, thank you, this is perfect!”

Though her words and requests seemed childish, nothing else about her seemed like so. It was not a fool’s errand she was on, she was not a half-wit - it seemed more like she knew something I did not, like I was partaking in an event that for her was an everyday thing, while for me, it was a complete mystery.

I always did like mysteries. In this case, however, I wanted to know what was going on.

But it took me a long while to truly understand where she came from, and what she was. She asked me things, many things, but never quite seemed to hear the questions I asked her. It was from a word here, a phrase there, that I pieced it all together - and finally, figured it out for myself.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyeing my airplane. She’d sat down next to me, her sash thrown over her shoulder as if to protect from the sun - she smelled of oranges, somehow, and that made me think back to the dreams of last night.

Well, not just to the dreams.

The scent was distracting in a simpler, more tempting way, too.

“It’s my airplane,” I told her. “It flies.”

I wasn’t sure why I specified that, but it seemed she didn’t know much about things. She was smart, but just…unaccustomed. Or foreign. If so, she was very foreign indeed.

I felt a little proud that I could tell her that I could fly. To that, however, she smiled, eyes shining, and said: “Really? So you’ve fallen from the sky, too?”

“Yes…?”

“Oh, how fun…”

She laughed, and though I was a little annoyed that she was making such light of my situation, I couldn’t help but smile as well.

“So you’re from the sky as well!” she exclaimed, looking at me excitedly. “What star are you from?”

At this point, I had strong suspicions as to whence she’d come from, and tried to ask another question.

“So you come from another star?”

But again, she didn’t answer me. She seemed deep in thought.

I didn’t dare disturb her. Stolen glances and just enjoying her presence was enough for the present. The engine could wait, perhaps a few more hours. My predicament didn’t feel so pressing compared to the mystery of the girl by my side.

Hell, I didn’t even know her name.

“My name is Clarke,” I began, trying another approach. “Clarke Griffin.”

She looked over at me, and smiled. “Lexa.”

Her voice was mesmerizing. Otherworldly and somehow both soft and powerful, she had an accent I could not quite place. In truth, I wasn’t even so sure how it could’ve happened that she spoke the same language as I - but, considering she’d just appeared out of nowhere, possibly fallen out of the sky from a whole other star, the language thing seemed secondary at best.

Unimportant, really. Not worth spending time on.

“Why do you have two names?”

I gave her a smirk, and shrugged. “Why do you only have one?”

A shadow crossed her face, and she looked away - and, for the first time, answered a question of mine.

“I left my title behind,” she said quietly, shrugging. Her hand, slender and pale, reached for the sand for a handful - I watched, as did she, as the sand slipped through her fingers as if grains from an hourglass. "I like yours, though. Griffin. Clarke is pretty, too. I've never heard a name like that."

“I don’t travel anymore,” she continued. “Not so much.”

There was a wistful tone in her voice, an undertone of regret and memories carefully packed away.

I wanted to ask, but didn’t. So far, I only knew her name - I did not feel we were familiar enough for deeper questions. At least not yet.

She was looking at me when I looked back at her, in a way that surprised and startled me; there was a peculiar look on her face, something curious and hesitant - it seemed strange that she’d suddenly be shy about asking a question, when thus far she hadn’t shown any hesitation whatsoever.

“Would you like to go see the sunset with me?”

I frowned. It was an odd request, given it was only a few hours from sunrise, and several more to just midday. “Now?”

She looked at me for a moment, and then, laughed. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting I’m not home.”

I was still frowning. “How do you mean?”

As it turns out, on her star, you only need to move your chair a little ways off, and you’ll see the sun set. And then, when you move it again, you’ll see it again. It is, as I learned, a very small star. Compact and enough for her, she said, nothing like our Earth.

“One day, I saw the sunset forty-three times,” she told me, eyes shining.

A moment later, before I had time to say anything, she added: “You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad…”

I wasn’t sure if that was meant for me or if she’d just said it as an afterthought.

“You were very sad, then? On that day you saw it forty-three times?”

She looked at me for a long moment, and sighed.

She didn’t need to say yes, or even nod. I understood. I wasn’t so sure what it was that I understood, but I did. There was a connection unlike anything else I’d felt or ever found, or even known about - something surreal, dreamlike, otherworldly.

The plane, the task of fixing it, all of it was almost entirely forgotten.

* * *

The next few days were spent in quiet conversation, primarily carried by her as I tried to fix my plane. She stood next to me, her black dress flowing in the hot breeze of the desert, and held tools for me. Sometimes, I had to ask twice before she knew to hand me a wrench or a screw. She was often distracted by her tales.

She told me about her travels, about the stars she’d visited before. At first, she’d been hesitant about telling me, but as she’d noticed how curious I was about the stars, she’d begun to talk. She told me about baobab trees that were evil and could easily overtake a star if it’s resident wasn’t vigilant and scrupulous about picking the saplings every morning; she told me about a star with no other resident than a king, depressed because he had no subjects; she told me about another star, where it’s lone resident was a lamplighter, his only job and fulfillment for the day consisting of lighting and putting out a single street-light - and much more, so much more, and each story sounded so mundane and yet was, in fact, beyond surreal in it’s subject. But I knew they were true.

Lexa was real, and she was not lying.

She may have seemed like a dream, but I knew, somehow, that she was as real as you or I.

She touched upon other things, by accident, things I could tell she didn’t really want to discuss so much. In no clear terms did she say it, but I figured it out for myself that she was in some form of exile - self-inflicted, that was my guess, from the way she spoke of her star and how she’d gotten there.

“Away from everything,” she’d said. “Everyone.”

And then, a moment later: “It was for the best.”

She always seemed to have a lot on her mind. It was as if at times she slipped away, in her mind, away from me and where we were - she got lost in thoughts that made darkness pass over her face, and, on occasion, seemed to bring tears to her eyes. Something was haunting her, that much I could tell.

I only wished I could’ve known what it was, so I could’ve helped her.

We spoke a lot. She asked questions, I tried to ask her questions; she seemed to want to know everything about me, I tried my best to learn as much as I could about her.

Often, she would just stop to look at me, when she thought I was preoccupied with my plane.

Sometimes, I'd look at her, when she was lost in thought.

I think she noticed me looking, almost each time. But I couldn't help myself.

Around the fourth day, she began speaking of leaving. My plane, though it required work, seemed to be getting along - my dread about being stranded in the desert, though wholly forgotten, had also been very much eased by my discovery that I could, indeed, fix the engine. She had watched, seeming to understand, and continued to speak. But on occasion, she’d mention her home again. Her rose, with four lone spikes that she worked so hard to keep safe from the baobabs, her little home, everything about it all hers and only hers - no one else knew of it, no one visited, and, though she said she was happy, I had my doubts.

“If you were so happy on your star, why did you leave to travel?”

She was quiet for a moment, chewing her lip.

“I missed talking to people.”

There was a sigh, and then she added: “I missed listening to people, too. I can talk to the plants in my garden, but they’re not very good at replying. It gets tiring after a while, listening to your own voice. But my home is what it is. Just a little lonely…”

“Then why not find someone to live with you, on your star?”

There was a long pause, and for a moment, I considered what I’d said - and my stomach flipped.

“I’m supposed to be alone,” she said quietly. “I chose that.”

* * *

“Why did you choose to be alone?”

My plane was ready to go, the engine was fine - I could’ve left. But I couldn’t, not just yet.

She looked at me, and I saw pain, hesitation, but also resignation; I knew, long before she spoke, that I’d finally get my answer.

“I was a leader once,” she said quietly. “I tried to be good.”

Silence.

“I tried to bring peace,” she muttered, “But it’s not easy, commanding many clans on many stars. I did not mean for a war to break out. I did not mean-”

She sighed.

“But I was the leader, I failed at my duty; I even failed to end the war, when it had begun. And people saw that as my fault. So I left. I had to.”

“Why?”

“In the end, their animosity was aimed at me: there would be no peace until they’d gotten rid of me. So I left,” she muttered. “I did not want to, it was not honorable - but I had no choice.”

“You couldn’t have led the people anyway,” I said slowly, “If they all hated you. I don't see how they could have...”

“I could have-” she sighed. “I should have died.”

“What good would that have brought?”

“Honor. Satisfaction to them-”

“I don’t think there’s anything honorable in death,” I said plainly. “I’ve seen war. It’s never the fault of one lone person.”

“Feels like it…”

We stared at the sunset, sitting side by side - she had her sash-cape wrapped around her shoulders, as if she was cold. When I saw her shiver, I reached for the jacket I had discarded much earlier, and put it over her shoulders.

“Thank you.”

She looked at me with her eyes dark and full of an emotion I couldn't quite read; I had my hopes, but I'd spent my whole life trying to never assume what I saw was what I thought. Especially when it came to what I thought then.

Twilight began falling from the tip of the sky, a darkness reaching for the last golden strands of sunlight reaching above the horizon. The wind had turned cooler, still warm but not as burning as that of midday; it was silent, eerily so, but I did not feel alone.

With her, I truly didn't.

“So you exiled yourself, because you took fault for a war.”

“Hmm…”

“Are you going to go home soon?”

She shrugged and looked at me. “I’m not sure I want to. But I have to.”

“Could I see it?”

I said the words fast, forced them out before I had time to get nervous or scared.

“My star?”

I nodded, and she, chewing her lip in thought, turned her eyes to my plane. “I’m not so sure you’d be able to come back.”

“Why?”

She gave me a curious look. “This body,” she said, gesturing at herself and then grabbing my arm, “It’s too heavy to travel.”

It took me a moment and some more explaining to understand what she meant.

“You leave the body behind?”

She nodded. “It’s only a shell.”

“And you have another, elsewhere?”

“You make one.”

I frowned. Nowhere in school had they told us that this could happen. No reasonable adult would have thought it possible. They would have scoffed and said it was impossible, that science dictated it was - that it couldn’t be possible.

But I, though I’d masqueraded as one for many years, was not a ‘rational, reasonable adult’.

“Could I travel, like you?”

She nodded. “You’d really come?”

There was an odd desperation in her voice, as if she couldn’t quite believe I would - that anyone would, really.

“I would,” I smiled. “If you’ll have me, Lexa.”

I didn’t know what exactly I was promising, but I think we both knew it was more than just a visit. It felt more permanent, more special - like a leap into the unknown, only the unknown felt more like home than any apartment of mine that I’d ever lived in. And I hadn’t even seen it yet.

“Clarke Griffin,” she said softly. “You’re a peculiar one.”

That made me laugh. If anyone was peculiar, it was her. But she just smiled, and I laughed for a moment, and all was calm.

A beautiful girl was offering me a chance to travel to the stars.

I would’ve been a fool to say no.

* * *

Travelling through the stars is less exciting than what one would think. It really only felt like I blinked for a longer time, and suddenly, we were there. On her star, her home.

It really wasn’t that big, but it felt big enough. There was a little hut, a rose by it’s door, and a garden - or gardens, really, all the little craters covering the surface were filled with plants, radishes and carrots and whatnot; I saw saplings, small, angry-looking spiky creatures, reaching up through the soil - as I looked, I saw Lexa come with a rake in her hand, and before I knew it, the sapling was gone.

“There’ll be some work,” she sighed.

She was smiling.

I was, too.

From behind her, I saw a sheep come bounding - a little white sheep.

“Is that-”

“Your sheep? It is,” she grinned. “Thank you, it’ll make my job a lot easier.”

I wasn't so sure how my drawing had turned into a real sheep, but somehow it seemed reasonable. Believable, even.

The starry sky was above us when she came over and took my hand.

“Come. Let’s go see the sunset.”

I frowned for a moment. “Are you sad?”

She laughed. “No, the opposite.”

She didn’t need to tell me she was happy. I knew that much from her smile and how she moved. I knew that much, because I felt so happy too.

And when she smiled into the kiss we shared? Yes, I knew.

There was, and would be, plenty of kisses. And my visit, it was never temporary.

I stayed.

I stayed in the stars with a beautiful girl.

I’m writing all this in hopes to explain this to you, my friends, if you ever receive this. I’m not so sure you’ll understand, or even endeavor to; regardless, it feels polite to at least try. If any of you ever wish to visit, her star is called Asteroid B-612; I know adults enjoy numbers, so here, have those. It’s by the star with a lamplighter, just behind the asteroid with sharp mountains and a garden full of roses.

_Clarke Griffin_

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are always welcome and dearly loved!!


End file.
